On Sunday (June 12th), the cast and producer/director of the upcoming Tubi film Cinnamon arrived at the Tribeca Film Festival to premiere the film and talk with the press. The film stars Hailey Kilgore, Pam Grier, Damon Wayans, David Iacono, and Jeremie Harris. Cinnamon was written and directed by Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr. and produced by NBA star Kevin Garnett and Oz Scott.
The plot of Cinnamon follows an aspiring singer and gas station attendant Jodi Jackson (Kilgore) who becomes involved in a robbery at her job. “It was really funny because I was in an interesting situation where I was filming a TV show when I booked the role and the whole thing was okay you’re literally gonna go right from your last scene to filming the show, so there wasn’t a lot of prep time for me but I just did as much script work as I could and grounding exercises, I really got to know the character. I watched a lot of Jackie Brown with Pam Grier and I feel as prepared as could be”, Kilgore explained. Speaking about what advice Grier gave her Kilgore stated, “Pam really taught me that it’s just as important to have fun, have a great time and really make it yours, so I’m really grateful because sometimes I can get a bit serious and a bit invested in the work but it’s really nice to just stop and laugh. On-set Kilgore shared that she listened to a lot of the divas such as Mariah Carey in order to feel saucy.
Pam Grier spoke highly of working with Kilgore stating, “It was wonderful, it was so much fun.” Grier who was previously a judge at Tribeca Film Festival said about reaching that milestone, “It took me my entire career to be able to be asked to be a judge because you’re looking at 30-50 films and so it’s very very difficult to look at films and be objective and look at so many different things.”
Jeremie Harris who plays Grier’s son in the film stated about what stood out about his character, “Just his love for his mother and how much he cares for her and the bond that they have together.”
The film’s writer/ Director Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr. said about reinventing the blaxploitation genre with the film, ” I think with the idea of blaxploitation we had a period of having the greatest Black genre films ever and they had this sort of a political understanding, it was sort of an uprising of Black culture and I think now that looks a little different. Now with black noire it’s like we’re taking Black folklore and people who want to get out of their situation and we’re putting them in movies that we wouldn’t often see them in. Those movies don’t kind of exist anymore, those Black genre films and so we just wanted to reinvent that and we renamed it Black noire instead.
Cinnamon will be released on Tubi on June 23rd. Check out more of our interviews with the cast, director and producer below:
